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Wednesday, April 27, 2016

The real ISIS challenge

With the burning to death of its
captive Jordanian pilot, the“Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” (ISIS) yet again
increased the level of depravity and assault on universal norms and values,
while debasing the religion it claims to embody. Through a track record of
sadistic mass murders, enslavement, rape, beheadings and graphic amputations,
ISIS seeks to maintain a“shock and awe” reality against the effect of
normalisation of horror and trivialisation of human life. The price it is
imposing on Islam in the process is immense.

Many Muslims worldwide espouse an
attitude of denial towards the actions of ISIS. For most, there is an abject
incompatibility between their religion and the crimes committed in its name,
and which they are called to witness. The faith in which they seek solace and
abhorrent criminality cannot co-exist in one body, or be mentioned in one
breath. Muslims seek protection behind successive lines of defense.

The first line of defense is that“it
did not happen.” ISIS is dismissed as a media product in the age of
sensationalism. Its alleged crimes either did not take place or have been
dramatically hyped for some commercial or political effect -- boosting ratings
for media organisations, and justifying political moves for international
actors. Anti-Muslim bias in Western culture and the public demand for news
stories with a negative portrayal of Muslims and Islam are often identified as
contributing reasons behind the inflated coverage. While the slick quality of
ISIS releases is sometimes used as proof that its videotaped reports are in
fact Hollywood-style productions, the frequency and span of distribution of
these releases have made the denial-of-the-fact claim untenable.

The second line is, therefore,“it
did happen, it is abhorrent, but it was not perpetrated by Muslims. ISIS may
thus be the enterprise of intelligence services, the creation of some nefarious
power seeking to fulfill its own purposes, while masquerading as a Muslim
group. The main potential instigators are the United States (may this be the
“creative chaos” referenced to by a former US secretary of state after a war of
invasion?) and Israel (recall the “Clean Break” memorandum prepared for the
hard-line Israeli prime minister in the late 1990s, and which ostensibly
details the need to collapse the regimes of hostile states and refashion the
region along factional lines). Washington and Tel Aviv are the usual suspects.
But others, too, are named, in the pursuit of a justification for denial.
Moscow, in its reliance on oil revenues, may favour uncertainty to avoid a
total collapse of oil prices, while both Tehran and Riyadh need potent tools,
however destructive and homicidal, to bolster competing chances of regional
domination.

The preponderance of evidence
linking ISIS to Muslims has initiated a variant of this narrative as the third
line of defense; “it did happen, it is abhorrent, it is perpetrated by some
Muslims, but it does not represent Islam.” The ISIS leadership may be at best
sincere and misguided, but it certainly does not reflect the real essence of
the faith. ISIS militants, alienated youth from across the globe, are the
object of manipulation for their deep sense of grievance, while suffering from
an absence of true knowledge about the precepts of Islam.

Radical ideologues have, however,
flooded the marketplace of ideas with arguments justifying much of what ISIS
has committed as allegedly rooted in the religion, forcing many Muslims to
retreat to the fourth line of defense: “it did happen, it is abhorrent, it may
be condoned by Islam, but it is not different from behaviour sanctioned by
internationally accepted norms.” Even the burning alive of the Jordanian pilot
is hence juxtaposed to some horrific collateral damage resulting from the use
of lethal force by the international coalition. The brutal assassination of the
pilot is thus rationalised as retaliation, based on the limited means available
to ISIS, as this group seeks to establish life-saving deterrence against a
superior enemy.

This seemingly Machiavellian
justification ignores major accepted distinctions between deliberately and
incidentally caused harm, as well as the right to dignity and established laws
of warfare -- long championed by Islamic scholasticism. Furthermore, it creates
a false moral advantage for ISIS, which is thus praised as shunning hypocrisy
in openly claiming its harshness -- in contradistinction to its enemies who
brandish an insincere adherence to human rights and other presumably universal
values while ignoring and violating them as a matter of normal course.

Most dramatically, this line of
thinking prepares the ground for the fifth and increasingly dangerous line of
defense: “it did happen, and as abhorrent as it is, it may be necessary.” While
rarely expressed openly, this argument has a certain level of acceptability in
many Muslim circles, even supposedly moderate ones. Supporters of radical
understanding of the religion cross the lines of denial into embrace: “it did
happen, it is laudable, and it is sanctioned by Islam.”

The fact is that the inhumanity
committed by ISIS in the name of Islam is happening, it is abhorrent, and is
deeply polluting the cultural well that Islam, as a religion and civilisation,
has endowed to the many societies where the faith is lived. The other fact is
that ISIS has the support -- however qualified, and often it is not -- of a
precious number of Muslims, while it has yet to encounter a credible refutation
of its claims and actions in the name of Islam. Evidently, Islam cannot be
reduced to the evil that ISIS represents, but Muslims can no longer dissociate
their faith and communities from the horror that is summoned by ISIS. Being
ISIS's primary victim, it is not for the common Muslim to apologise or justify,
as is demanded by some whose attacks on Muslims and Islam long predate ISIS and
is rooted in their own reductionism and intolerance. It is, however, an
obligation and the imperative for intellectuals, scholars, and spiritual
leaders to overcome all denial and reclaim a heritage that has been long
abandoned to stagnation, irrelevance, and usurpation. Here lies the real
challenge that ISIS constitutes to Muslims worldwide.